Sacre bleu: Many contenders, but this must surely be the greatest sporting rip-off of all
An incendiary moment of French farce has made us realise how much Lord Bledisloe’s silverware still means to rugby fans and Australians at large, writes Jim Tucker.
It’s the Cup of controversy again after one of the worst refereeing decisions in sport. Ever.
The roof almost popped off the top of Melbourne’s Marvel Stadium on Thursday night such was the outrage at the ridiculous call that cost the Wallabies victory over the All Blacks.
Time wasting! Two teams fight out a riveting nine-try spectacle of skill, intense physicality, fightbacks, yellow cards and classic trans-Tasman drama. And it’s all decided on a time-wasting call never sighted in Test rugby before.
Give us a break.
The crowd-pleasing English batsman WG Grace got it right more than 100 years ago when he was given out and turned to the umpire.
“They haven’t come to see you umpiring, they’ve come to see me batting,” Grace said.
If French referee Mathieu Raynal skippers a fleet of French subs in his spare time, you’d be cancelling them all over again.
Look at me, look at me, he must have been thinking as his whistle turned a stunning 37-34 Wallabies lead into a heartbreaker. He whistled Wallaby Bernard Foley for delaying a penalty kick to touch in the final minute. Not by minutes but a few seconds. Kiwi scrum, Kiwi try, 39-37.
Social media has many ills but emotional, off-the-cuff reaction to moments like this can be entrancing.
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“That’s the worst I’ve seen,” Wallaby great Matt Giteau tweeted from his couch. A “disgrace” said commentator Tim Horan on air. Even many Kiwis agreed.
World Rugby must cop the heat. Somewhere along the line, they have created a refereeing community where even the best are scared to make a mistake. They adhere to the supposed safety of black-and-white “ref the law” calls and the feel for the game the best refs once had has been taken from them.
Of all the time-wasting free kicks to find in a game of rugby when nothing else is policed.
Players go down on their knees for medical attention for invisible injuries to waste time.
Constant re-sets of scrums waste time. The interminable referrals to the Television Match Official waste time.
Of course, there are time-wasting precedents in other sports. A Russian opponent once chided a tennis umpire for being afraid to police Rafael Nadal’s slow play.
There’s a 25-second rule for time taken between points.
“Rafa will pick his ass for 30 seconds and you guys will watch. You’re not going to say a word,” the Russian chirped of penalty points never being applied.
Golf. Tournament golfers get put on the “slow play” clock if they fall too far behind the group in front. Very few ever get docked a penalty stroke and it’s never a big name. It’s far easier to hit little-known John Catlin with a penalty stroke at the US PGA Championship last year. He was warned for taking 74 seconds over one shot and hit with a one-stroke penalty for taking 63 seconds on a shot later in the round.
Here’s a conspiracy theory. Would the ref have pinged All Black Richie Mo’unga for slow play in the same situation as Foley?
Dodgy officiating is an incredibly crowded field with contributions from umpires, referees and officials from just about every sport over the years.
Personally, I always liked the tack of volatile Romanian tennis player Ilie Nastase. He spoke several languages. He always thought it rude to blow up with abuse in a foreign tongue so he’d often chose the language of the country he was in when he went off on a tirade. That made it easier for umpires to dress him down.
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The referee who blew time six minutes early on the 1930 World Cup soccer final in Uruguay might have saved the Raynal situation. The teams had to be brought back from the dressing rooms to finish the final.
Keith Butcher, a soccer referee in England in the 1970s and early 1980s, was colour blind. He couldn’t tell the difference between the red and yellow cards.
Today, some would say there are plenty of refs who don’t know when to issue a card or not or of what colour, even without that affliction. That crazy Souths v Sydney Roosters final in the NRL with a record seven yellow cards is a case in point.
Wallaby lock Darcy Swain could easily have been given a red, rather than a yellow, for diving into the leg of an All Black, who had to go off with a knee injury.
There was some old-fashioned drama and edge-of-the-seat screaming at the TV to this Bledisloe Cup Test.
That’s the winning vibe above all. We cared.
The Bledisloe Cup may hold 22-and-a-half cans of beer but no Australian lips have taken a swig from it since 2002.
That means no Australian teenager has ever known a time when the Wallabies held the trophy.
Wallabies great Tim Horan has always contended that it’s harder to win the Bledisloe Cup than the Rugby World Cup.
Think about it. Horan won two World Cups but only two Tests from 11 on New Zealand soil over more than a decade at the top.
That’s the crux of trying to win the thing. You have to storm the battlements at Auckland’s Eden Park or another rugby fortress in New Zealand if you want to wrestle it back in any year plus win in Australia for a clear 2-0 series win.
It’s not like Game Of Thrones where you see a castle ransacked in every episode.
The Wallabies haven’t won at Eden Park since 1986 when Top Gun and Crocodile Dundee were the year’s top movies. Maybe, Tom Cruise is the omen we’ve been waiting for now his new Top Gun movie is out.
Personally, I love a good sporting hoodoo. Queensland cricket’s quest for the Sheffield Shield was of enduring fascination for more than 60 years.
Smashing a hoodoo really does mean something. It’s on to Eden Park on September 24.
The Bledisloe is already lost for another season. Maybe, it is just like the Shield quest once was. Come January 1, we can all say “this is the year.”
Just don’t serve this dish again with a side order of French farce.
Jim Tucker has specialised in sport, the wider impacts and features for most of his 40 years writing in the media. He has been covering Bledisloe Cup Tests as a rugby writer since Australia’s epic victory of 1979.
